The Fiery Wheel Read online

  “But how were we lifted up?” the young woman asked, all of a sudden.

  Paul had thought about that. He replied: “The Fiery Wheel must need matter to maintain its radiant activity. Undoubtedly, at moments determined by the Saturnians, it possesses a considerable attractive force. That explains the raising up of houses and land at certain points of its passage. We know that movement, abruptly interrupted, is transformed into heat. It’s a physical law. The house, rocks and soil captured by the Wheel catch fire on contact with it, providing it with fuel, and heat...”

  “That’s ingenious,” said Bild.

  “It must be right,” said Brad.

  “Yes, but it doesn’t explain why we haven’t been annihilated like the houses of the Paseo de Gracia,” said Francisco.

  “Perhaps the Saturnians calculated and directed the attraction of their machine in such a way that we were drawn to it at an angle, into the black hub of the wheel and not on to the ring of light.”

  “However,” said Bild, hesitantly, “I’m wondering why the Saturnians, since they are Saturnians, need a habitable hub for the Fiery Wheel. If they’re pure minds, why can’t they travel freely in interplanetary space without this bizarre machine…?”

  “Yes,” said Brad, “like light, or sound, they could go...”

  “Indeed, but doubtless the interplanetary void and atmospheres other than that of their planet of origin aren’t appropriate to the existence of the Saturnians...”

  “They can die, then?” said Francisco.

  “Why not?”

  “Get away! Souls don’t die!”

  “How do we know? In that case, an intelligence, a mind, isn’t a soul…in which case, an intelligence, a mind, a Saturnian, can die...”

  There as a momentary silence, and Paul de Civrac suddenly exclaimed: “Oh, if we only had Dr. Ahmed Bey with us!”

  “Ahmed Bey?” said Jonathan Bild. “Who is this person that’s worth the trouble of being missed in the situation we’re in?”

  “Believe me,” said Francisco, “I miss all the people of Earth! If they were here, we could set off to conquer Saturn and all the other worlds...”

  “Francisco!” Lolla interjected, severely.

  “Who is Ahmed Bey?” asked Brad, calmly.

  “A strange scholar I met in Calcutta, during a voyage to India” Paul replied. “Ahmed Bey knows a great many things. It’s said, in Calcutta, that he possesses all the terrible secrets of the ancient Brahmins, who were absolute masters of life and death.”

  “I don’t see what use this demigod would be to us here,” muttered Bild.

  “He’d be able to explain to us clearly what we can only sketch with difficulty in vague conjectures,” Paul said.

  The skeptical Bild shrugged his shoulders and pulled a face, which testified that he, personally, did not believe in the exorbitant faculties of the said Dr. Ahmed Bey.”

  Paul dared not insist—but that would not have been his emotion if he could have known that, at that very moment, on Earth, Dr. Ahmed Bey was thinking about him, Paul de Civrac, remembering their meeting in Calcutta, and preparing to go, in the most prodigiously unexpected manner, to the rescue of the prisoners on the Fiery Wheel!

  In spite of all the marvels of thought-transmission, however, Paul could not know that, and he did not know it.

  He had let himself drift into a reverie, in which he was reviewing the episodes of his terrestrial life with a certain bitterness, when the voice of the young woman, his companion henceforth, suddenly brought him back to the present and its anguishing reality.

  “What strangeness!” Lolla murmured. “But how long will it last? Will we return to Earth?”

  “A mystery!” pronounced Brad.

  “We shall see!” said Bild

  “Unless we die of hunger between now and then,” the pragmatic Francisco sniggered.

  The remark was so judicious that all eyes turned to the valet.

  “Well, yes,” he said. “These Saturnians, as you call them, if they’re pure minds, or souls, would doubtless laugh at a slice of cold ham, a slice of bread and three hard-boiled eggs! Have they asked you if you were hungry? Have they offered you food? No, they haven’t, have they? What, then? It’s probable that your Saturnians don’t understand French, Monsieur de Civrac, nor English, Messieurs Jonathan Bild and Arthur Brad, nor Spanish, Señorita! How will you make them understand, if you even see them again, that we, who aren’t pure minds, need to nourish our bodies with something other than white sparks, green light and condensed cloud? Ay caramba! There are five of us, and I only have enough food for two days...”

  So saying, the rational and comical Francisco seized his valise, set it on his outstretched legs, opened it and took out various packets, which he weighed in his hand, murmuring: “Chicken…ham…bread…tinned sardines…hard-boiled eggs…fish and tomatoes…one more liter of wine and half a bottle of mineral-water... Yes, with careful rationing, there’s enough to nourish five people for four meals. Oh, I did very well to disobey the captain and bring provisions…he wanted to eat breakfast and dinner in buffets! The buffets of Saturn…they must be jolly!”

  The valet’s words were only humorous in appearance. Far from making anyone laugh, they inspired very black thoughts. There was nothing agreeable about the prospect of a long sojourn in the enigmatic hub of the Fiery Wheel, without any possible communication with the beings inhabiting it, and probably without food and water. They saw themselves all condemned, however briefly the present situation was prolonged, to the most horrible of deaths, by hunger and thirst...

  Paul took out his watch. It was ten minutes to twelve. It had, therefore, been eight hours since Brad, Bild and he had been abducted by the Wheel.

  “Today is the twenty-second of June,” he said. “We need to establish a calendar in order that...”

  “I have one!” said Brad. He opened his wallet, which was indeed furnished with a calendar.

  “There’s neither day nor night here,” said Bild. “Brad will therefore be responsible for keeping his calendar in line with the hours elapsed...”

  “Agreed!”

  “Lunch is served, Mademoiselle!” said Francisco.

  In front of them, on the opened and inverted valise, the valet had “laid the table.”

  Lola Mendès served herself with her own fork, knife and glass, Brad, Bild, Paul and Francisco each had ten fingers and a good traveling knife appropriate for all needs, the delicate as well as the rude.

  They ate without talking. The meal was rapid, brief and—it must be said—insufficient, but Francisco rationed the food with as much prudence as equity.

  “And that’s one!” said the valet, closing the valise again. “You still have three meals of the same magnitude. After that...” He clicked his fingers in mid-air, then took tobacco and papers from his pocket and rolled a cigarette, which he lit.

  Bild had four cigars. He offered them round and everyone, except for Lola Mendès, was soon surrounded by a cloud of smoke.

  While taking slow puffs on his cigar, Paul studied the young woman. She was sitting straight-legged, with her arms folded, her chin lowered over her chest and supported by her left hand. She sighed, and tears soon began to roll down her cheeks. Disturbed, Paul threw away his cigar and drew nearer to her.

  “Mademoiselle…”

  She shivered, raised her head, wiped away her tears with a swift gesture, and said, in a soft voice: “I was thinking about my father. But I have to be strong. You won’t see me cry again.”

  She forced herself to smile, and their eyes, having met, did not turn away. Paul’s were full of encouragement and consolation; Lola’s seemed grateful. Spontaneously, Paul offered her his hand. She gave him hers and he felt the sight pressure of her fingers.

  “You’re not doomed,” he said. “I shall save you…”

  He was strangely emotional. He would have liked to say more, to express his devotion, but two voices abruptly returned all his composure,

  “We�
�ll save you!” they said. They were the voices of Bild and Brad, standing beside Paul, each holding out a hand to the young woman.

  With a brisk movement, she stood up and gave her left hand to Brad and her right to Bild. The handshakes were firm and vigorous, but Lolla’s eyes did not turn away from Paul’s and the young man suddenly felt a surge of joy pass through him and fill him with an invincible courage.

  “Now,” said Bild.” We need to do something...”

  “To find out where we are…enter into communication with the Saturnians,” added Brad.

  Paul gripped his revolver and started rapping on the walls with the butt, sometimes here and sometimes there—but his revolver and his hand, penetrating the dense vapor, rebounded like a spring.

  He launched himself head first against the wall, but he felt suffocated as soon as his head was in the vapor—which immediately threw him backwards in any case.

  Bild and Brad stayed to either side of Lolla, inactive, and watched, as did Francisco, with a mocking expression.

  After a good half hour of exercise, Paul put his revolver back in his belt, saying: “If the Saturnians know what we’re doing, they don’t want to respond...”

  “I think it’s necessary to await their caprice,” said Lola Mendès.

  “Let’s wait, then!”

  They all sat down again, and smoked cigarettes rolled by Francisco. They talked, coming up with a thousand increasingly crazy conjectures…and the hours went by, bleak and empty. No Saturnian appeared; the silence was so profound that, in order not to hear it, they continually made some noise with their hands or feet when they were not talking.

  The same anguishing question was repeated a hundred times: “Where are we?”

  At eight o’clock in the evening, Francisco declared, impassively: “Dinner is served, Mademoiselle.”

  As at midday, they ate rapidly, and very little; they were obliged to drink even less.

  “And two!” said the valet, closing his valise.

  Lolla Mendès lay down, and while they smoked she went to sleep.

  “Santiago de Compostela be praised!” murmured Francisco. “It’s the first time the Señorita has been able to sleep since...”

  “We ought to get some sleep too,” said Brad. And he lay down not far away from Lolla. Bild did likewise, then Civrac, and then Francisco.

  Side by side on the strange Saturnian eiderdown, they fell asleep, overwhelmed by the emotions of the extraordinary day.

  Meanwhile, having traveled many thousands of leagues since they had emerged from the terrestrial atmosphere, the Fiery Wheel was speeding through interplanetary space like a capricious comet, heading toward the sun.

  Chapter Five

  In which six revolver shots have terrible

  and unexpected consequences

  The day of the twenty-third of June was bleak and dismal for the prisoners of the enigmatic Fiery Wheel.

  They did not see anything; no sound struck their ears. No green column carrying a luminous globe appeared in the vast polyhedral room. It seemed that the Saturnians had satisfied their curiosity fully during their first visit. Where were the mysterious beings, then? What was there beyond that immutable cloudy wall with a thousand regular faces, with no gap in its continuity? How was the soft green light produced?

  A mystery!

  Lolla Mendès, Paul de Civrac, Jonathan Bild, Arthur Brad and the valet Francisco discussed all those questions but no certainty emerged from their hypotheses.

  At midday and seven o’clock they ate two meals—the last!

  And again, after the men had diffidently smoked a cigarette, they lay down....

  But how can one sleep with the thought that, tomorrow, one will have nothing to eat? How can one rest when the mind is tortured by a hundred insoluble questions and the heart is gripped with the anguish of the frightful mystery? How could they even close one’s eyes under that implacable green light filling the hallucinatory spherical room? None of the unhappy heroes of the alarming adventure was able to achieve the comfort of sleep.

  “To hell with the Saturnians!” exclaimed Paul, breaking the silence after having turned over a hundred times between Bild’s sharp shoulder-blades and Brad’s broad shoulders.

  “To hell!” muttered Jonathan.

  “May the plague choke them!” growled Arthur.

  “They have no fear of that!” sniggered Francisco.

  “My God, what are we going to do?” moaned Lola Mendès.

  No one was hungry or thirsty, even though the final meal had been far from abundant, but the apprehension of imminent hunger and thirst, which would be unslakable, hollowed out their stomachs and dried out their throats.

  “We have to get out of here!” Bild exclaimed. “We have to find a way...”

  A long whistle resounded and, as before, through an opening suddenly produced in the cloudy wall, three green columns bearing luminous globes came in.

  They young woman and the four men remained motionless.

  “The Saturnians!” Paul whispered, unconsciously.

  The three columns stopped their forward glide simultaneously. A thousand brief sparks erupted from the globes, crackling. Then, even the sparks were no longer manifest. The green hue of the transparent columns weakened somewhat, and the globes became an opaque white, slightly tinted with blue, lighted from within but not radiant.

  The Terrans studied the three motionless Saturnians calmly. Long minutes went by.

  Suddenly, a voice spoke: “Fire a revolver shot at one of those luminous globes,” said Francisco, brutally.

  “What?” said Bild, his expression indecisive.

  “Yes,” the Castilian repeated. “Smash one of the stupid balls—that one there!” And he pointed at the Saturnian in the middle.

  “Why?”

  “Because the diabolical Saturnians might do something. In any case, it will break the monotony of or present existence.”

  “But the consequences!” Paul exclaimed. “Think about the consequences? How do we know whether…everything might fall apart?”

  “Well,” said Francisco, “we’d die of something other than hunger or thirst.”

  Brad had listened without saying a word. He drew his revolver and examined it.

  “Damn!”

  “What does it matter?” said Francisco. “Go on—shoot!”

  “In truth...” said Bild, and raised his right arm.

  “Shall we, Arthur?”

  “Let’s do it, Jonathan.”

  Arthur Brad raised his revolver too. Their movements were stiff and somnambulistic, their voices strange—hallucinated voices.

  Paul de Civrac looked at them, his mind confused, while Francisco sniggered—but Lolla Mendès launched herself toward the two Americans and put herself between them and the Saturnians.

  “No, no!” she cried. “Don’t do that! You’ll lose us everything. Wait…perhaps things will change soon enough...” She turned to her valet. “Francisco! I forbid you to give bad advice. I forbid it!”

  She was extremely excited, her cheeks pink, her gaze shiny.

  “Al right, Mistress, all right!” the man muttered. “I’ll shut up. But we’ll die all the more surely of hunger and...”

  “Shut up! Shut up!”

  She pushed Bild and Brad back to Paul’s side, made them put their revolvers back in their holsters, and sat down beside the Frenchman, who gazed at her with an expression in which there was admiration, and a certain other sentiment.

  The Saturnians disappeared the same way they had come.

  In absolute silence, the hours passed...

  What would have been the night, in terrestrial terms, went by without bringing any change, and then more hours went slowly by, and what would have been day gradually faded into the past.

  At eight p.m. on the twenty-fourth of June, Francisco said: “I’m hungry.”

  “Me too,” muttered Bild.”

  “And I’m thirsty,” murmured Brad.

  Only Paul and Lo
la had the strength not to complain. Paul was suffering more by virtue of seeing the young woman suffer than from his own need. He squeezed one of her pretty pale hands in his, and wished that all his vigorous masculine blood might pass into Lolla’s veins.

  There was another long interval of silence.

  “How long can we live without eating or drinking?” Francisco asked, suddenly.

  “It depends on the strength and temperament of each of us,” Civrac replied.

  “In that case,” the valet went on, “the Señorita, certainly the weakest of the five of us, will die first?”

  No one said a word. In the bleak silence, each of them could hear their own hearts beating. After a slight sigh, Lolla Mendès let her head fall on Civrac’s shoulder.

  At that moment, the whistle announcing the Saturnians sounded—and, indeed, they reappeared immediately. This time, the green columns supporting white globes were four in number. They stopped three paces away from the group formed by the Terrans.

  At first, Paul’s attention was attracted by the arrival of the Saturnians. Then he felt an unaccustomed weight on his shoulder. He turned his head and saw Lolla Mendès, pale, her eyes closed and her lips bloodless.

  Francisco, Bild and Brad had seen it too. They got up, their features taut, their gaze resolute, facing up to the impassive Saturnians.

  “She’s fainted,” Paul said.

  “Well, it’s necessary to finish it!” exclaimed Francisco, excitedly. “I’d rather doom us all at a stroke that see the Señorita die in front of me, little by little, without being able to do anything...”

  He grabbed Paul’s revolver. Bild and Brad drew theirs.

  “It’s mad!” cried Paul. “Mad!” But he did not feel that he had the strength to intervene.

  In unison, Bild, Brad and Francisco each took aim at one of the intolerable luminous balls.

  “Fire!”

  They fired.

  Presumably, the gestures went awry because their fingers were trembling; nothing happened.

  “Again! Again!” Francisco screeched.

  They pressed the triggers together.

  A formidable shock suddenly shook the polyhedral chamber. Bild, Brad and Francisco fell on top of Paul, who had instinctively clutched Lolla Mendès in his arms. Howling, they clutched at Civrac and Lolla, and the human cluster, thrown to the right and the left in a confusion of gleams, flashes and crackles, fell through a large opening in the wall...